Keep Calm, and Drink your Boba

Goals in Life

As a junior year student and now looking back to when I was a young girl, I realized that each one of us had so many aspirations. We wanted to be doctors, nurses, lawyers, superheroes, firefighters, soccer players, and the list goes on. We would play dress up games and pretend to be in our own imagination to relive our aspirations.

Yet, as time passes by, we realize that that list of compiled careers one after another was nothing more than almost an illusion of our childhood. The harsh realities hit us like a slap across the cheek as we enter our junior year in high school.

There was no more dress up and no more list of aspirations. We only had our brains, knowledge, tools, and a list of classes to take, colleges to go to, and tick marks of GPA recorded space after another written on a random spot on a blank piece of paper that which, to serve as a reminder, of where we are in life.

I remember wanting to become a doctor when I was younger. Then a little bit of businesswoman because I wanted to earn money and also my mom wanted me to. Then junior high, I went into more depth and wanted to become a neurologist or a cardiologist. Law was put in there too, mainly working with criminal cases. Afterwards, becoming a doctor even deepened as I fell in love with the brain and heart sections of biology in 9th grade.

Sophomore year and junior year, my current year, were the two years that side tracked me a bit. SAT classes began to pop up, AP classes began to list down, A-G requirements were right up on my face, and if it wasn’t enough, keeping up my grades while maintaining time for baby sitting my baby sister at home were also my priorities.

Growing up, that list of compiled careers was now shoved somewhere deep in a trashbin. It only served as a bittersweet memory of when I was a small child, wanting to become something for fun. But life isn’t about fun, especially when it’s school. Or high school for that matter.

I don’t know where to go right now. Instead of being a doctor, I might major in political science, which if I were to tell my seven-year-old self that, she would’ve just been staring at me like an idiot as how I stared at my mom when she started talking about nurse terms. Instead of being a lawyer, I might major in pre med and be a pediatrician. I love taking care of babies after all.

From time to time, I can’t seem to find a way to smile whenever it’s talking about my future goals, future careers, where I would live, bills, etc. But I guess there’s only one way to find out how this is all going to work out: go through it all.